The Influence of Thermal Stresses and Strand Bending on Surface Defects Formation in Continuously Cast Strands: Improvement of slab surface quality is a very important goal in continues casting process of steel. It is closely coupled with casting line productivity and tendency to increase casting speed. In such a case rapid cooling of strand surface mast be employed. It results in thermal stresses development and formation of surface cracks if casting speed, cooling conditions or the arc of casting machine are not appropriate. The strain and stress fields in continuously cast strand have been determined based on the developed thermo-mechanical model and finite element software. It allowed to calculate variation of selected criterions integrals over the hole casting line starting from solidification process in the mould and ending at cutting section. Steady solution to heat transfer equation has been used to calculate strand temperature field. Mould temperature has been calculated from the three dimensional transient model. Finite element method has been employed to build steady and transient heat transfer models. Finite element solution accuracy to the temperature field has been improved. New algorithm of the solidification heat handling has been developed to stabilize a steady solution to the heat transport equation. Damageability of the strand has been evaluated based on four fracture criterions.

The main purpose of this paper was to determine and compare the boundary conditions of heat transfer on the cooled surface of a cylindrical sensor made of Inconel 600 alloy while cooling with a water jet, water spray and air-assisted water spray under high-temperature conditions. The inverse method for the heat conduction equation was used to determine the boundary conditions. Experimental tests were carried out, including temperature measurements at several points inside the cylinder while cooling with all the tested systems from a temperature of 900 °C for three values of water pressure: 0.05 MPa, 0.1 MPa and 0.2 MPa. Temperature measurements were used as the input data to identify the heat transfer boundary conditions. The temperature field of the axially symmetric sensor was determined using the finite element method. The boundary conditions were determined as average values of the heat transfer coefficient and heat flux and local values of the heat transfer coefficient. A comparison of the amount of thermal energy dissipating from the sensor surface as a result of boiling and a forced single-phase convection is also presented in the paper. The highest uniformity of cooling was obtained during air-assisted water spray-cooling.